Crystal Reports not working in Shared Hosting

Choosing between the right server configuration is always a question while setting up your backend. For now, let us see how can you pick between a shared hosting service and a VPS (Virtual Private Servers)

Shared Hosting

This comes to use when you need less disk space requirement and processing speed. One page websites, websites with small databases etc could use this mode of hosting easily. But remember that any resource that you use here are shared among other users as well. This can affect your processing speed significantly. However, this doesn't matter if your website doesn’t require a ton of space. Another major disadvantage is when you use a third party tool like crystal reports. Most of the major hosting providers does not support crystal reports with shared hosting and since you don't have remote desktop access in shared hosting, you cant setup this manually also. A great option here would be to use a VPS which allows installation of third party tools using remote desktop connection.

Some major hosting providers for shared hosting

VPS Hosting

This is a great pick if you have high traffic demands or multiple sites to manage. It offers greater flexibility in configuring applications on the server(for example: crystal reports) . We can have direct file manager access to the servers using a remote desktop connection and install the required applications based on our project requirements. Another greater advantage is that unlike shared hosting, we have slices of a server which acts as dedicated servers. Hence each of the servers acts as a virtual server dedicated to our specific needs and no resources get shared between other users.

If you need to setup crystal reports on your vps, just install the required crystal reports runtime on your server by logging in using remote desktop connection.

Some major hosting providers for VPS

While having mentioned the advantages of using VPS, remember that we are having a admin user access to our servers. So, there are limits to the support that can be provided by the hosting provider customer care. So if we are having issues regarding application setup on the servers using remote desktop connection, it is most likely that the support team would ask you to resolve the issues yourself. It is because they are having a limited access.